Social Security Fraud Prevention Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. VALADAO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3779, the Social Security Fraud Prevention Act.

This commonsense piece of legislation will help mitigate rising instances of identity theft, which have become a significant problem across our country. What is worse, these crimes tend to affect the populations that need protection the most, including the elderly, children, and veterans.

Recovering from having your identity being stolen is a burdensome and expensive process. One way to reduce occurrences of this crime is to prevent the Federal Government from mailing documents that contain the full Social Security number of an American citizen, unless it is absolutely necessary.

I realized the need for this legislation after I was approached by a constituent in my district who showed me a letter she received from the Social Security Administration that had her full Social Security number printed on it, as well as her full name and address.

Upon further investigation, we found that the Social Security Administration was also printing full Social Security numbers visible on the outside of postcards. This is simply unacceptable.

Social Security was established to provide older Americans financial security during their retirement years, not jeopardize their security by handling someone's personal information poorly. Even more concerning is that the problem is not exclusive to the Social Security Administration but has become a government-wide problem.

My bill, H.R. 3779, would prevent the Federal Government from mailing documents that contain full Social Security numbers, unless absolutely necessary, and require the Federal agencies to partially redact Social Security numbers on documents, whenever possible. Additionally, the bill prevents Social Security numbers from ever being visible on the outside of a piece of mail.

Please join me in supporting this commonsense piece of legislation that will help Americans avoid falling victim to one of the fastest growing crimes in the United States.

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